By Benjamin Lefebvre
(Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022)
At sixteen, Dale Cardigan is his own guy. He goes it alone much of the time, an old soul who senses adolescence is but a time to endure. He knows it gets better. He’ll find his place when he’s an adult.
Oh, how I feel for Dale. It’s not so dire that he’s crossing off days on a calendar as a countdown to when life will really begin, but he doesn’t make the waiting period easy on himself. Dale attends an all-boys private school after having a tough time in a previous school. The switch doesn’t seem to be so much on account of parental concern about bullying as for the fact the family moved. Dale’s father died in a car accident seven years prior and his mother has remarried, settling in a new Southern Ontario town.
It's high school, but it’s an unusual experience because he’s with the same group of boys for all his classes. That can feel unbearable if you’re the odd one out and Dale seems to go out of his way to make himself that person. He doesn’t speak in class. Ever. Not to the teachers, not to his classmates. Somehow everyone goes along with this. Dale’s convinced people that he has to rest his vocal cords since he’s a singer with various choir gigs, solos and all.
Music is Dale’s world. He’s an accomplished pianist, far beyond his years, paid to play organ at a church. Whether singing or playing, he reads and picks up the arrangements quickly. He connects with adults in his musical sphere. A lesbian couple at the church are about to get married and have requested that Dale play and sing at both the wedding and the reception.
It’s at the wedding that Dale runs into Rusty, a furry, red-headed classmate, who also knows the couple. Always startling to see someone in a different context. They’re seated at the same table for the reception. Dale winds up talking to Rusty. A friendship begins even though they don’t have much in common. The boys talk and text outside of school, but Rusty seems to respect Dale’s established cone of silence in class. Due to Dale’s own devices, this creates more than the usual on-off social dynamics. It adds more confusion to typical adolescent angst. What is this relationship? Is it just friendship or could it be something more?
One of the refreshing—and, for me, remarkable—things about reading current gay young adult novels is that there is so much queerness in the teens’ world. Dale has the lesbian couple, plus his married gay uncles. He’s not out to his family even though it’s a worst kept secret. It’s not that he’s afraid he’ll face rejection; rather, he can’t be bothered with it and all of the pronouncements of love and acceptance.
Times have changed!
Here’s an early conversation between Dale and the husband of his mom’s best friend after the man asks Dale if he has a girlfriend:
He winked at me as he asked the question, like this was some kind of male bonding…
So I just said…“I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t even—I don’t date girls.”
“Oh.” And then all these wrinkles snuck onto his forehead, and his eyebrows started to skew at an angle I’d never seen on anyone outside of a cartoon before. “What do you do with them?”
I involuntarily snickered but tried to make it sound like a cough. “Nothing. I’m not dating anyone. But just for the record, it’s not girls that I’m not dating—it’s boys. If that makes any sense.”
“What?”
I didn’t know how to make it any clearer than that, so I looked at him, raised an eyebrow, and waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Oh. You mean you’re—”
“Gay. Queer. Sure. But I’m still single.”
“Huh.”
It’s a typical Dale exchange. Most of the rest of the world is clueless, tolerated at best. Maybe he’s more of a typical teenager than he purports to be.
This is an epistolary novel, almost all of it told in letters to Dale’s dead father who seems to be the best listener Dale’s got. (There are a few passages Dale writes as more of a journal entry. These are spicier bits or thoughts written when Dale doesn’t feel like communicating with his dad.) I don’t mind stories, including this one, told through letters but they’re tricky. While I don’t wholly agree with the common writerly piece of advice, “show, don’t tell,” the epistolary structure lends itself to going overboard on the telling bits. This muddies up the pacing of the story. Sometimes the reader wants quick passages of dialogue and/or action without having things set up with, as in this case, “Dear Pa.” Still, there’s a novelty to the format and it make sense as a private means of expression for a teenager, especially someone like Dale who keeps people at bay. I wonder how many times the author, Benjamin Lefebvre, a witty talent, found the format constricting. How many times did he want to break away and, dammit, just tell the story?
Another refreshing part of the novel is—and, here, I suppose I’m giving away an aspect of the plot—its frankness about sex. We’ve had that since Judy Blume, to be sure, but it’s still deemed risky for some publishers, especially when it’s queer sex which seems to get book banners more aroused than the targeted reader. It’s not graphic as in many adult novels, but Lefebvre fits in the word jism a few times.
I recommend the book even if I have a few quibbles. It’s always hard to give supporting characters their due—probably a snag in every novel; maybe it’s flattering when we want to know more about them—but the problem could have been lessened if Lefebvre merged the two adult gay couples. I wonder if there was an intentional decision to include a broader gay spectrum by having both a gay and a lesbian couple. Nice idea, but it was hard to distinguish each couple’s role which seemed to come down to being supportive, enthusiastic and available…even if Dale never seeks them out. He’s a solitary guy. It’s telling that the only adult he looks to is dead silent. Personally, I’d nix the gay uncles and turn the church couple into lesbian aunts. It’s also hard to make anything of Dale’s stepbrother whose name I forget, not surprisingly. This guy is the same age, lives in the same house halftime since his dad is Dale’s stepfather. They’re also in the same class, all day, every day. He has a teensy, yet important moment and that’s it. There’s an argument that adults in YA are supposed to take a back seat so the teen protagonist has to solve the primary conflict(s), but this stepbrother, who is everywhere in Dale’s life, should have a greater presence in the story. The stepdad? Almost invisible. Even Dale’s music mentors don’t get much of a mention either.
Most problematic of all is Dale’s mother. Not only is she underdeveloped, she doesn’t make sense. There’s a doting nature to her, but somehow she’s clueless about both Dale’s musical talent and his cone of silence at school. Surely, music teachers would have commented many times over the years about his potential. Also, I have no doubt that teachers—and Dale’s stepbrother—would have mentioned his lack of participation and social engagement. Perhaps it’s dramatic for her to suddenly learn about it late in the book, but it’s not believable. The shock was mine since I’d assumed she knew all along.
Quibbles aside, Dale’s an interesting character and a strong introvert at that. (Yay, positive portrayals of introverts!) There are parallels to the popular Netflix series “Heartstopper” and Alice Oseman’s graphic novels. Dale and Rusty are in similar stages of their queer identity as Charlie and Nick. This isn't a love story per se. Dale's too grounded to be irrationally smitten. The future of Dale and Rusty is open. Dale's realistic enough to know he'll be heading off to college in a year and they don't have a lot in common. His relative levelheadedness is another refreshing aspect of the story. Lefebvre infuses humor throughout the story and gives Dale a unique voice. Leave it to a teenager to describe a pond as being “this beautiful Windex colour.”
Lastly, I’d like to give a shout-out to Arsenal Pulp Press, based here in Vancouver. It’s not solely a queer publisher, but they’ve got plenty of LGBTQ titles in their catalog, including books I’ve previously blogged like Everything Is Awful and You’re a Terrible Person and Jonny Appleseed as well as works by Ivan Coyote, Amber Dawn and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. Check out their catalog here.
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